Venom

Butch hands around my wrists

Butch hands around my throat

The restaurant is dim enough to feel private, the light soft enough to blur the rest of the world until there is only you and me and the slow hum of jazz moving through the air like something molten. Candlelight gleams across the table, touching the rim of your glass and catching the curve of my mouth when I smile the way I only ever smile at you.

My right heel slips off beneath the table. A small defiance, quiet and innocent to anyone watching. I let my bare foot slide forward, slow as a prayer whispered in the dark, until it finds your calf. You are warm beneath my touch. I glide upward just a little, a slow and unholy stroke, enough to tell you I did not come here to behave.

And as my toes graze higher, I lean in.

Yes, I chose this dress for this moment. For the way it loosens when my body angles forward, offering the clean lines of my collarbones, the vulnerable slope of my throat, the soft spill of cleavage wrapped in silk you could peel away with nothing but your voice. Your eyes follow the invitation I give you, dropping to my chest with a hunger sharp enough to mark.

I lift my wine with a languid ease that borders on sinful. The liquid is dark and heavy, the colour of bruises blooming under fingertips, the taste of something ripe and ruined. It clings to the glass the same way your stare clings to my skin. I let it stain my lips before I speak.

“Tell me, darling…” I murmur, watching your pupils widen, “do you like the wine?”

Your answer is silence. Your eyes catch mine with a glint I know too well, dangerous and controlled. It’s the kind of look that makes my knees want to part under the table even though I know better. A single brow lifts, slow and precise, the kind of gesture that tells me I have just pushed you somewhere delicious.

And you love it.

You love me when I misbehave a little for you. When I let this streak of wickedness rise to the surface, when I show you this little dark, sinful spark at the centre of my being that no one else ever gets to see or touch. And when I let you claim it all with your gaze as though it has always belonged to you.

I smirk against the rim of my glass, tasting wine, tasting danger, and the trouble I have just earned.

Oh, I know exactly what I am provoking. And you, across from me in the hush of this soft, expensive quiet, are already deciding how you will unmake me for it.

You will ruin me later. Fully. Thoroughly. Precisely.

And I will fall apart for you the way I was made to.

But for now, let me be wicked a moment longer. Let me bask in the dark weight of your gaze in this shadowed corner, where no one else knows who you are when you look at me like that.